


Decimation

by write_away



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, Brief suicide ideation, Decima Virus (Wolf 359), Gen, eiffel contemplates his mortality, self-indulgent reflections on etymology, set vaguely around episode 15 but with references to information from episode 41, smart eiffel rights, someone get this man therapy, the author contemplates her new hyperfixation on hurting doug eiffel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26851159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_away/pseuds/write_away
Summary: Doug Eiffel knows what it feels like to be inches from death.It comes fast, in his experience, even when it feels slow. The choking rise of water, the crushing isolation of guilt, the sweet, burning slide of whiskey down his throat - it’s faster than you’d think. One second, the world is moving too fast around you. The next, it’s not.This death, though? This one is not fast.His veins are thrumming with(a virus, a death sentence, a penance)adrenaline, so fast and loud that it pounds in his ears, a static indistinguishable from the radio during a storm. Time is crawling now.He wonders if it’ll ever speed up again. If that’s when he’ll know. If that’s when it’ll happen.If that’s when he’ll die.A reflection on death, decima, and expendability in the vastness of space.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	Decimation

**Author's Note:**

> So. I started listening to W359 roughly 5 days ago. I am about to start the finale. I think I may have lost control of my life, but at least I managed to bang out a little more than a thousand words of angst in the meantime so... I'll take it.
> 
> Enjoy!

Doug Eiffel knows what it feels like to be inches from death. 

It comes fast, in his experience, even when it feels slow. The choking rise of water, the crushing isolation of guilt, the sweet, burning slide of whiskey down his throat - it’s faster than you’d think. One second, the world is moving too fast around you. The next, it’s not. 

This death, though? This one is not fast. 

His veins are thrumming with _(a virus, a death sentence, a penance)_ adrenaline, so fast and loud that it pounds in his ears, a static indistinguishable from the radio during a storm. Time is crawling now. 

He wonders if it’ll ever speed up again. If that’s when he’ll know. If that’s when it’ll happen. 

If that’s when he’ll die. 

“Hera? You there?” He knows it’s a dumb question. She’s always there. 

Well. Almost always. 

He wonders if she can tell him what it’s like to die. 

She doesn’t respond - maybe she can sense the morbidity that rolls off him in waves, or maybe she’s written him off as a lost cause, a glitch that she really ought to cull before he integrates with the rest of the system. Maybe he’s already dead, just an amalgamation of cells and disintegrating neuropaths. 

Or maybe she’s just busy. 

Yeah. Yeah, it’s probably that. He hopes. 

Still, he wouldn’t blame her, really, if she was trying to cut her losses while she still could. Remove the corrupted files. Rewrite the programming. Debug. Recover. 

That’s what they’ll do when he dies, isn’t it? Minkowski will soldier on - she’ll manage without him. He’s no more than a blip on Hera’s RAM anyway. They never needed him. And Hilbert - well, fuck what Hilbert thinks, to be honest, but at best he’ll mourn a failed experiment. 

And Kate? Anne? Well. They’re better off without him. 

He tries again. “Hera?” 

Here’s the thing: Eiffel doesn’t _like_ space. He doesn’t _like_ anything. He fears things, lets that chill settle deep into his bones while he stares at the same four walls until his mind numbs, and he loves things which - honestly, it has the same effect in the end. For someone who staunchly believes in casual dress, he is not very good at _casual._

Loving things has always been his problem. He doesn’t know how to be casual about it. He doesn’t know how to stop. 

So, anyway- space. It’s immense and empty and it does not care about him. 

He kind of loves that. 

It’s kind of nice to know that something can’t be let down by him. It doesn’t care that he is here. It doesn’t care that he’s a fuck up, that he has dreams of headlights and screams, that he is on the precipice of collapse. It doesn’t care that he can’t seem to do anything right. 

It also does not care that he is dying. 

Space is sort of lonely. 

Hera is silent. Eiffel sighs. Solitary contemplation about the futility of life and his own mortality for 500, Alex.

Here goes nothing. 

Contrary to popular belief, Doug Eiffel is not an idiot. His philosophy is work smarter, not harder. Work hard, party harder. That’s his motto, and it let him graduate at the top of his class, summa cum laude, even with a blooming alcohol dependency and a baby girl he hadn’t planned for but couldn’t live without. He had studied science and history and language - he’d had to if he ever wanted to work in Communications. He’d had to if he ever wanted to open doors for his Anne. 

So. Decima. The virus. The end. The syllables taste sour in his mouth. What does it _mean_ _?_

Latin. A tenth. A tithe, a sacrifice, a tax. 

The root of decimate - to kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of something. Specifically a tenth, if historical precedence means anything.

He took a military history class in undergrad once, just to fill some space in his schedule - the kind of class he could literally sleep through and still pull an A - but one story sticks in his mind even now. An ancient Roman military leader punished his own rebellious army by splitting them into groups of ten, selecting one soldier at random, and instructing the other nine to beat that man to death, regardless of if he had committed the crime or not. A decimation. Remove a tenth. A decima. 

He used to find it morbidly fascinating. Now he just finds it morbid. Collective, random, senseless punishment. A war crime now, sure, but since when has that mattered in space? Since when has he mattered?

Is he that soldier?

Silly question. Of course he is. 

Decima. Latin. A tenth. A tithe, a sacrifice, a tax. A punishment. A death. 

_His_ death. 

And now he waits. 

This death is too damn slow. 

“Hera? Still busy?”

Static. 

He’d ask why _him,_ why _his_ bloodstream, why _his_ body, but he knows: he’s expendable. He always has been. Shocker. 

He doesn’t really want to dwell on that for long. 

But his brain is like his heart, and it doesn’t know how to be chill, how to be casual, how to stop thinking about how he’s going to die slowly, how even his own cells have turned against him, and now his chest feels tight - panic or the virus or something else entirely? - and what exactly is he meant to do out here where nobody and nothing cares about his fate? Bit by bit, he will slip away and then he’ll be gone. 

Nobody will bother to remember him, that’s for sure. 

He cannot breathe. He is going to die. It will be slow. 

Decima. Latin. A tenth. A tithe, a sacrifice, a tax. His punishment. His death.

A Roman goddess, one of the Parcae, a Fate. Nona spins and spins and spins, his head his heart the thread, and Decima - she measures. How long is his string? How much more does he have left until Morta sharpens her blade? 

He can already feel it pressed against his throat. 

He doesn’t bother calling out for Hera again. 

What now? What do you do when the end is inside you, festering and lying in wait for its opportunity? How do you deal when there is something virulent and vicious and dangerous inside your skin? 

If only he could pretend that dangerous something was the virus and not just himself. 

If he’s being honest with himself - and he’s not, not very often at least - there is very little stopping him from walking out the airlock right now. Fast. Not slow. He doesn’t want to go slow. 

God, please, don’t let him go slow. 

Decima. A tenth. A tithe, a sacrifice, a tax. A string of fate held against a ruler that’s far too short. One soldier killed to keep the rest in line. 

One soldier sacrificed to save the rest. 

And that’s why he can’t shoot himself into space right now, why he can’t break into the armory and hold the pistol to his head, why he can’t go into Hilbert’s ravaged lab and down a bottle of poison like it’s the last shot of vodka and he’s dying of the wrong type of thirst. It would be easy. 

It wouldn’t be fair. 

Prisoner or not, Hilbert needs a subject and Eiffel trusts he’ll figure out a way to get one. He’s motivated like that, motivated in a way Eiffel hasn’t been since he lost his job and his dignity and his daughter. Hera isn’t an option, for obvious reasons. That leaves Minkowski. 

Just Minkowski. 

So, that’s that, he supposes. He’ll die slow. Let the virus take him apart, bit by bit. Let it destroy - no, let it _decimate_ him. 

It’s the right thing to do. 

Ok. One last try. 

“Hera? You up?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed and I love to hear about making people sad.
> 
> I also hope you enjoyed learning about the etymology of "decima" because honestly, the history of the word "decimate" is one of my favorite things ever.


End file.
